Monday, 12 November 2012

Life and Fate

I first read Anna Karenina when I was in my mid-teens.
I remember being deeply moved by the story of Anna and her doomed love but I
missed a lot of Tolstoy’s subtlety. I say this because I have now reread
this magnificent book in the light of the recent film adaptation with Keira
Knightley in the role of Anna.

In my review of the movie I described the novel as a War and
Peace of the emotions. But it’s actually much more than that.
Though it is more intimate in an emotional sense than War and Peace Tolstoy
also manages to capture the sweep and grandeur of a particular period in
Russian history. It’s an effortless shifting of focus really, from
interior feelings at one point to exterior settings at another, inside and
outside captured with almost perfect comprehension.

The novel opens with arguably one of the most recognised
lines in all of world literature;

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family
is unhappy in its own way.

On my first reading I thought this was a reference to Anna
and her own relationships, first with her husband, Alexis Karenin, a man she
clearly does not love, a man she never loved, and then with Count Alexis
Vronsky, the great passion of her life, a man she loved too much. But
it’s not. In the immediate sense it’s a reference to the marriage of her
philandering brother, Stiva Oblonsky, and Dolly, his much suffering wife.
Beyond that it really touches on a variety of relationships. It touches,
in a deeper sense, on a larger family, that of the Russian aristocracy, on the
threshold of a precipitous decline.

The title is deceptive. Much of the novel does indeed
focus on the tragedy of Anna but not in an exclusive sense. It might just
as well have been called Portraits of Marriage; for marriage and relationships
is what it’s all about. Not all unhappy, I should add. For in
counterpoint to the story of Anna, Karenin and Vronsky we have that of Kitty,
Dolly’s sister, and Constantine Levin. This, as it turns out, is the
novel’s one happy family, resembling no other.

The idealistic and occasionally tiresome Levin is an obvious
self-portrait of Tolstoy himself. I say tiresome because the author
allows him to become a vehicle for his own economic, political and spiritual
obsessions, which buzz at points as annoyingly as the bees Levin keeps on his
country estate!

For me the fascinating thing about Anna Karenina is just how
well it captures a particular social milieu and a particular period in Russian
history. I offer another possible title – Decline and Fall. There
is pathology here, something symptomatic almost. At one extreme we have
the insouciant Oblonsky, thoughtless and shallow, a scion of an ancient family
in terminal decline. At the other we have Levin, a country gentleman who dreams
of a communion with the peasantry, while always being apart from the
peasantry. In the middle we have Anna, passionate, transient and
destructive, a force of nature. On the outside we have the peasantry,
looking on with incomprehension and bemused contempt.

It’s often said that Anna Karenina is the greatest novel
ever written. Greatness, it seems to me, is such and elusive and
uncertain measure. There are serious flaws in the book which, at least to
me, would seem to stop it somewhere short of ‘greatness’, at least understood
as perfection. But there is something greater than greatness; there is
brilliance. Anna Karenina is a brilliant book, one with breathtaking
insight, a handling of character and theme that shows one to be in the presence
of a true master of the art.

Tolstoy’s understanding of human nature is as broad as it is
deep. Although the novel has a third person grand narrative style, the
focus changes with the mood, moving from a God-like perspective to interior
consciousness with equal ease. Even Laska, Levin’s dog, is allowed a
perspective at one point in the narrative! Tolstoy’s descriptive power is
as grand as it is in War and Peace, though the richness of his country scenes
stands in sharp contrast to the anonymity of his urban settings.

Anna Karenina is a novel of consequences. In some ways
it’s similar in handling to War and Peace, in that the author clearly believes
that each individual destiny is shaped by forces that cannot be
controlled. Anna is the novel’s boldest character, one who defies
convention, choosing love over propriety. That is the beginning of her
tragedy.

I suppose it is possible to say that Vronsky also places
love, the love of another man’s wife, before propriety, but for him the choice
does not carry the same burden, a measure of social hypocrisy, perhaps, though
the judgements here are our own, not Tolstoy’s. His task is simply to
show the limits of freedom and the penalties of choice.

The penalties for Anna are high. Unable to divorce,
she grows increasingly uncertain of herself, increasingly insecure in her
relationship with Vronsky, who can, after all, discard her in a moment and
marry another, as his mother clearly wishes. Anna’s passionate nature
turns in on itself, driven to destruction by recrimination, doubt and
paranoia. Her story resembles no other in its unhappiness. It ends
in a station; it ends in suicide under a train.

Is there any happiness to be found here? Well, as I
say, to contrast with the dark there is the light of Kitty and Levin. If
Oblonsky represents shallow and cosmopolitan urban values, Levin – Tolstoy
himself – seeks roots in the land, roots in ‘the people’, something of an
idealised and unreflective giant. He finds contentment with Kitty and
meaning in life, including spiritual meaning…at least up to a point.

Tolstoy admired the work of Charles Dickens. But the
thing about Dickens’ novels is that they all have one conclusion – the end of
history. One feels that the action is done. All that remains is an
endless summer of happy families, big meals and blessed death. Not so
with Anna Karenina. Levin is a doubter; his quest is not over, his
happiness less than complete. His is a story that is also destined to end
in a station, the story of Tolstoy’s own future.

About Me

Hi, I'm Ana! History is my passion -and that is not too strong a word - but I also enjoy politics, philosophy, art, literature and travel. In addition I have a deep interest in witchcraft, in all of the ancient arts. Apart from that I'm a keen sportswoman. I play lacrosse and tennis, but I love riding most of all. I have my own horse, Annette.